Fair point, that’s not all of them. I need to stop being so cynical about educational accreditation. Like the MOE thumbs up sign or the British Council centre of excellence.
I didn’t say they all are nationalistic, so please quote correctly in future. However, saying Taiwanese are not nationalistic ,as it did, is a huge generalization, as sadly I’ve come to expect. Posts should be well researched instead of the off the cuff remarks becoming all so common
Having looked around on the Internet, I now withdraw my earlier guess and replace it with a new guess: that the person who wrote the language in question in the ad under discussion probably did not intend to implicate anyone in anything, but instead merely, and relatively innocently, conveyed what she thought had been conveyed to her.
I understand why people are upset with the ad, but I find the whole debate on Facebook to be out of control. People are generalizing one post from one branch to all the branches of the school even though they are all run differently. Then someone asks for proof of one non-white and non-Asian person working in the faculty. Picture is provided. People now say that having one black person does not mean anything. Sigh…
I have a friend who is in charge of hiring teachers at her school. She says majority of the faculty are white or Asian because that’s basically 99% of the applicants. In the rare occasion of having an applicant that is black or dark skinned, she still has to check for qualifications and available matching teaching positions. It’s not that easy.
I think we need to remember that we are in Taiwan and majority of the foreigners here are still white. Even if the staff at a certain school does not appear to be multi-cultural/ethnic, it could be due to other reasons than racism. Also, looks can be deceiving. Just because someone looks white, it does not mean they are all from the same cultural background.
I have not looked at the FB posts. It is inevitable that in any discussion individuals and group pick up threads that are of interest to them, and people end up sidetracked. At least here on forumosa threads do get spun off
The composition of the applicant pool should not be under question. No one should be asking for recruitment quotas to be implemented either. Furthermore, conflating “race” and culture, while understandable, is not correct because notions of “race” obscure the diversity and richness of the human condition.
I also think that context should not be brought into the discussion. Imagine if someone were to say “only men need apply”…would people say “wait a minute, was it because maybe [only men are available / {…choice of rationalisation goes here…}?” or people really just say “is that qualification justifiable and appropriate?” That is the crux of the matter.
I think that posts on this board provide adequate evidence that racial discrimination sometimes occurs in the hiring of foreign teachers here. That’s not to say that everyone who hires discriminates; however, discrimination occurs often enough to be noteworthy.
Below is a selection of posts having to do with the matter originally under discussion in this thread. I think I should note that it is sometimes observed on the board that non-whites have been able to work as foreign teachers here, and that some of them have had positive experiences, as some posts below should show.
This first batch has to do with hiring or employment discrimination against dark-skinned people:
Further down the thread:
This next batch has to do with discrimination in hiring and employment of people of Taiwanese or Chinese ethnicity (there are some positive stories):
